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18th Aug 2020

Michelle Obama tells Americans to vote for Biden “like our lives depend on it”

Alan Loughnane

Michelle Obama

“If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

Michelle Obama has called on the American public to vote for US Presidential hopeful Joe Biden “like our lives depend on it.”

In what was her most pointed criticism of US President Donald Trump to date, the former First Lady said that Trump was “the wrong president for our country” and he “has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head”.

“If you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election,” Obama said.

“If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

She described Biden as “not perfect” but a “profoundly decent man” and said he understands what it takes to rescue an economy, beat a pandemic and lead the country.

Obama also referenced her famous words from the 2016 Democratic Conference when she said, “When they go low, we go high. Going high is the only thing that works.”

She added: “But let’s be clear. Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top.”

Vermont Senator and former opponent of Biden, Bernie Sanders, also called on the public to vote for Biden saying that under Trump “authoritarianism has taken root in our country”.

He said Trump had proven himself incapable of dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, addressing institutional racism in the country or coping with the issue of global warming.

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